After what has not been the best of years, I’m getting the palate cleanser this year needed by finishing it out with a wedding. After a registry office wedding many years ago, my brother is having the church wedding that him and his wife had always wanted, and it’s a lovely thing that fills my heart with warmth to see them do it 🖤
So, in the spirit of the wedding theme, my 2024 reading roundup is brought to you by the old wedding rhyme:
Something Olde,
Something New,
Something Borrowed,
Something Blue,
A Sixpence in your Shoe
One favourite read from this year for each line of the rhyme.
Something Olde
So here I’m picking a book from 1995, yeah maybe not ancient but old enough—and this book has the feel of an all-time science fiction classic. It was an absolute joy reading I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, which is slightly strange to say when it was arguably a particularly heavy book emotionally about loneliness and survival, in a strange and empty world.
Something New
I feel like I’m hitting this one on two counts with Evie Wyld. She was a new to me author this year, and I devoured some of her back catalogue as well as The Echoes which came out this year. If I remember rightly I stumbled on her books after seeing a recommendation from James Smythe (another phenomenal author you should absolutely check out if you like smart, beautifully crafted science fiction). Her books are simply wonderfully written, with beautifully crafted characters with faults and scars and traumas. Wyld without exception delivers emotional reads, both tender and unflinching.
Something borrowed
Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy had a full re-read this year. These books remind me of diving into fantasy books, fully escaping into them when I was younger, and reading them again puts me right back in that frame of mind. They’re coming in for ‘something borrowed’ as I think it’s fair to say I borrowed just a part of my love of reading and writing from these books
Something Blue
Ok so I’m going to cheat on this one and give you two. Blue(ish) covers, and blue from the sea and the sky.
The first is Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea. A wonderful meditation on love, grief and loss. A modern day fable, Armfield’s novel is both surreal and thoughtful, and touchingly real in its weirdness.
The second is How High We Go In The Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. I can’t say enough about how wonderful this book is. Covering a wide cast of characters over a huge span of years, each window into their world is carefully linked to carve out personal moments that give insight into a wider whole. An undercurrent of hope makes this one of the most beautiful books I’ve read this year.
A Sixpence in your Shoe
I never even knew this was a line in the rhyme—it sounds kinda uncomfortable, especially if those shoes are the kind of pinching stilettoes so often seen down the aisle. And my link here is, I’ll admit a little tenuous, but if we follow the thread through from sixpence to money to crime spree then I think it’s appropriate to drop in Donald Ray Pollock’s The Heavenly Table here. I love Pollock’s work—dark, gritty, but with a bleak sense of humour that carries you through—and The Heavenly Table does not disappoint as you follow the hapless brothers Cane, Cob and Chimney fall into a life of crime where you can’t help but root for them.
I hope you’ve all had a wonderful reading year, and here’s to more great books in 2025 🖤
The Dust Lounge 
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